Utah Innovation Awards

Inventing a Better Tomorrow

By Devin Felix, Rachel Madison and Heather Stewart, Illustrations by Juliann Law

April 10, 2014

Other solutions focus on challenges specific to high-performance computing (HPC) or the cloud, but Big Workflow unifies all of the data center’s resources, including bare metal and virtual machines, HPC environments and the cloud. Adaptive’s Moab HPC Suite and Moab Cloud Suite are an integral part of Big Workflow solution.

MoneyDesktop Personal Financial Management Suite by MoneyDesktop

The MoneyDesktop personal financial management (PFM) suite is a set of robust tools that help individuals better understand and manage their finances. About three and half years ago, MoneyDesktop began partnering with financial institutions, enabling them to provide their account holders with the financial management tools. The company has signed more than 400 financial institutions and 29 online banking providers—and more than one million account holders now use MoneyDesktop. In fact, account holders are adopting the products at a record-breaking rate. Some MoneyDesktop clients have had more than 60 percent of their account holders adopt the product—unheard of for the industry.

The software benefits not only the users, but the financial institutions as well. The PFM suite can be privately labeled, so consumers see a product that is simply an extension of their financial institution. And the newest addition to the suite is Insight, a tool that lets the institutions view account holder data in a simple and actionable way.

SaltStack by SaltStack

Managing a large-scale data center demands a great deal of hands-on IT maintenance work—unless administrators have automation tools like SaltStack to keep the servers humming. SaltStack maintains Salt, one of the largest and most-active open source projects in the world. It also offers commercial software, SaltStack Enterprise, that is used by systems administrators for server automotive, application configuration management and cloud orchestration. SaltStack is the only product built specifically to address the speed and scale requirements of organizations dealing with tens of thousands of servers.

SaltStack has been offering SaltStack Enterprise for about six months and already has more than 40 clients. It has also won numerous awards, including the InfoWorld 2014 Technology of the Year award. It was named a Linux Journal Reader’s Choice product in five categories, including Linux Product of the Year and Best New Commercial Application.

Honorable Mention

AtTask Enterprise Work Cloud, by AtTask

Life Science: Biotech Finalists

Injectable Discogenic Cell Therapy by DiscGenics

Lower-back pain is remarkably common, affecting up to 30 percent of U.S. adults at any given time. It is the second most common reason for physician visits and the third most common reason for surgical procedures. To treat patients with back pain caused by degenerative disc disease, DiscGenics is developing Injectable Discogenic Cell Therapy (IDCT), an off-the-shelf injectable therapeutic based on regenerative medicine and adult stem cell science. IDCT will regenerate the patient’s own disc after a simple injection procedure—before there is a need for painful and often ineffective surgery.

DiscGenics’ patented technology can isolate stem cells directly from adult human disc tissue and expand them into therapeutic cell populations called discogenic cells. The company’s research suggests these cells have a better capacity to regenerate the nucleus pulposus due to their origin within the same harsh disc space they are meant to treat. DiscGenics is in discussions with the FDA regarding a first-in-human, phase I/II human clinical trial design for IDCT.

LPCN 1021 by Lipocine Inc.

Gel-based testosterone products are the most widely used testosterone replacement therapies in the country. But these products have an inherent risk of transference—the testosterone gel rubbing off of the patient onto others who come in contact with him. They are also messy to apply, and patients discontinue using them at high rates.

Lipocine has developed an oral formulation of testosterone undecanoate (TU), an 11-carbon-side chain attached to testosterone. Upon breakage of the ester bond, testosterone is formed. The company uses its Lip’ral technology to facilitate steady gastrointestinal solubilization and absorption of TU for convenient oral, twice-daily dosing. An effective oral therapy could increase patient compliance and eliminate the risk of transference.

Lipocine has completed a successful Phase II study of its medication, and it has begun enrolling patients in the Phase III trial with results expected next year. The company has six U.S. patents and 14 pending patent applications.